I’m reading Thomas Moore’s little book, Meditations. One of those gems that delivers a bolt of
enlightenment on every page. Like Anne Lamott if she were a monk.
Small, intense books pave my path to sagehood. They would be
my path to sainthood if I paid attention to all the lessons they teach. Instead,
I’m cursed with a weakness that lets the world tear away my best intentions.
That’s it, in a nutshell.
My obstacle to perfection is that I’m two women. (I explore
this in my memoir, Ordinary Aphrodite.) The brainy me tends to over-think issues. I read deep books and feel the author’s ideas
fill my head. But that’s where everything stays. The other me is flighty. I ponder
the book for a day or two and then it’s back to watching Nashville
In a nutshell.
My writing group is discussing finding our Writer’s Voice, that
illusive combination of phrasing and structure, personality and thinking that makes
each writer’s work unique. Some writing gurus claim it comes after we’ve
written 1,000,000 words. (I put this in numerals so it will look like a big
number. Actually, I think I wrote that many words reworking my first novel.)
I envy writers who find their writer’s voice, their genre
and their place in the commercial market. They write a mystery, sell it to New
York and start another before the royalty check
clears. I suspect they were born knowing who they are and are satisfied with
that person. All the while I wander the earth searching for the true me.
This is what I know about my writer’s voice. My writing
involves the heart. That’s why I love memoir. When I write about “Me,” the name
I give the universal woman who occupies my brain, I let my heart tackle the
hard stuff. My ego gets to sit on the fence and watch me share my thoughts with
the world in a self-effacing manner that allows women to laugh at themselves as well. Afterwards I feel useful. I feel like I’ve taken a few steps along my
path of enlightenment and brought along a few sisters to share the trek.
There is a downside to being both giddy and wise. It’s hard
to define what I do. I write women’s fiction. Inspirational fiction that women
will read and share with their husbands and boyfriends. Contemporary stories
that resonate with modern readers. But, wait. I also write historical fiction
set in the American West. And Mexico .
I write short stories of the heart. I write for religious magazines. I
wrote a dark story about mental illness. What each of them has in common is my
writer’s voice, the way I define my path.
Writing is a way of exploring the big questions. I pick up knowledge along the way, but I still have more questions than answers. I’m
finding my spiritual path in a messy world. What’s to be done? I guess I’ll
just keep writing. Reading and listening. Take quiet walks in the
woods. Find inspiration in faces of strangers and friends. Work on being a better friend. Pray and ask for prayer from others.
Maybe that’s enough.
Wannabe intellectual? Average IQ? I'd never associate your name with that description. Intellect includes the heart; you cannot separate the oneness of a human soul to make a two.
ReplyDeleteDecorous arrangements of words are our attempt to describe the heat, the yearning, the grief and the joy that fills us with desire. Our brains may find almost successful ways to categorize the way we string our words together to form stories that attempt to convey the We all human beings share. Call a story a western, a mystery, a romance, or whatever you wish. It's all memoir. Our stories are the footprints we leave behind as we travel toward our destination.
In a nutshell.
anne, writers will thank you for your valuable insights; i have read your books and blog for some time now..so, concluded that much of contemporary displeasure with the literary movement can be attributed to 2 words in the language = "I" - "and".
ReplyDeleteit would be very interesting to read any single blog which dispenses with the first pronoun or the dreaded addendum AND..thus highlighting the subject or theme.
anne Lamott indeed, she is so very other oriented.. so human.
here again..it finally dawned on me that i have forgotten one of the long letters which i write to my writer friends in the darkness of 2 AM..
ReplyDeleteyes, you are ready for fiction, with the wealth of experience, the sagacity of personal discipline you have acquired through land, animals or people.
that is where i see your text and context..bon voyage chere amie ecrivain.
Well said, Anthony Toscano. Thanks for the brilliant perspective. Nadine, If I can figure out how to write my blog without using "I", this writer will be glad to do so. Thanks for your comments. Happy writing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest joys we, as writers, can experience is the evocation in a reader of a specific emotive response, and to do this, we wind up searching for the voice. Whether it is the ring and resonance of exactly the right verb on the anvil of creation, or the capture of a precise mood or feeling by metaphor, we exult in not only its capture, but in the hunt, and in the presentation of the trophy.
ReplyDeleteAs writers, it seems that the questions we are most often asked, and that we most often ask ourselves, turn on the experience of writing. What’s it like to write? Why do I write? What can I do to make my writing better? Shouldn’t we also examine the experience of the reader for whom, metaphorically, we bang our heads repeatedly against a porcelain sink? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves “What is it like to read what I write?”
The common thread that follows through any spellbinding work of fiction is that it engulfs the reader. It co-opts not only his attention, but, more importantly, his participation. He is compelled to turn the page because, at some level, it is about him. It is never about the story. It is never about the author.
Make no mistake; the reader wants to be engulfed, he wants to participate. It’s why he reads fiction: he wants to live the lie, if only for a while. He wants to smell the wood smoke from the author’s campfire clinging to his hair, he wants to see and hear the banners snapping in a fresh breeze laden with the smell of drying grain. He wants to do this so vividly that the texture of the blanket wrapping his bare ankles and the drone of the television in another room are lost to him, supplanted by the experience the author creates in concert with him. He wants to be played by the writer like Itzhak Perlman plays his Stradivarius—but remember that it is from the reader—the Stradivarius—that the music must issue.
He wants the same richness of experience from your characters. Not only does he want to love them, or hate them, or fire them, or reward them, but he wants to see them in his mind’s eye, and smell them, and hear them. He wants to know them intimately, with the details of their warts and maladies, the infusions of a credible past and the promise of a tomorrow, and make his own judgements. The more of the reader’s senses and emotions you can involve, the more profoundly will he be co-opted and driven to participate.
Every one of us has, at one time or another, become so engrossed in a task that when we looked up from our activity, hours have gone by without notice. This absorption with task, and the concomitant absence of linear perception (thus, time) indicates the Alpha state of consciousness that researchers describe, and it is in this state that the reader is so joined with the read that he becomes it. This is the region where fiction is best experienced. Reviewers allude to it with adjectives like “hypnotic” or “riveting”, and more or less miss the point.
Our quarry is immediacy; the absence of a mediating agent, or the quality, if you will, of directness of perception. Nothing gets in the way; nothing intervenes in the reader’s experience. He isn’t distracted by tiny errors in fact, or by an unanticipated syncopation of rhythm and flow. He never wonders to himself of the author, “I wonder what he meant by that!” The work must be transparent, seamless.
We find our quarry in symbolism and in syntax, in connotations, and in the very rhythm of our words. We find it in the common experience we remind the reader of. It is like gold, this elusive element; it lies hidden in the rubble of the river-bottom of our limbic brains, and buried in the till of our intellects. Our task is to bring it forth to the reader, refined, and amaze him with his own profundity. We must decide where to lead the reader, and invite him there unobtrusively, and with such conviction and such art that he can only follow.
Our quarry is ephemeral and elusive; its capture is an art form.
It is in the search for the perfect voice we find our reader. And, more importantly, where our reader finds us.
Professor Hopkins, you honor me here. I have thought long about these matters and I know you are right. Why, then is it so easy to stray from these concepts when we write? Because at some point we begin writing to impress our reader, not to snuggle up to our reader and peer over her shoulder as she reads. Thank you for reminding me--again.
ReplyDelete